Store issues with billing

[BouncingXkala]

Two really annoying issues that my customers are experiencing right now is:

 

1) How do I update everyone's invoices, right now only way is to hope that the old customer makes a support ticket for me to then manually update it.

New price has been 60 instead of 120 for months.

 

 

2) No option to buy when the user was a subscriber previously?

When the user clicks view purchase, this is all they see? No option to buy, renew nothing.
 

 

 

[opentype]

1 minute ago, TecsenseAsh said:

1) How do I update everyone's invoices, right now only way is to hope that the old customer makes a support ticket for me to then manually update it.

When you change the price in the ACP, you should be asked whether you want to apply the change to new purchases or all purchases. That’s the only and proper spot to affect all future invoices. 

 

2 minutes ago, TecsenseAsh said:

No option to buy when the user was a subscriber previously?

Yeah, known issue without a proper solution. Feel free to add your comment here: 
https://invisioncommunity.com/forums/topic/466659-expired-subscriptions-must-be-treated-like-no-subscription/

 

[BouncingXkala]

6 minutes ago, opentype said:

When you change the price in the ACP, you should be asked whether you want to apply the change to new purchases or all purchases. That’s the only and proper spot to affect all future invoices. 

 

Yeah, known issue without a proper solution. Feel free to add your comment here: 
https://invisioncommunity.com/forums/topic/466659-expired-subscriptions-must-be-treated-like-no-subscription/

 

Glad it's been posted, I have my doubts in the quick turnaround time. Nether the less.

 

When I updated the pricing, it did indeed give me that little box of updating everyone else's pricing but many users didn't get updated, if any at all.

[Stuart Silvester]

Your customer has an active PayPal Subscription, they cannot 'renew' anything because that subscription is still active and waiting for PayPal to take the funds and then let your community know that it has been processed.

As noted above about updating the prices for existing customers, there's an option specifically for customers using PayPal Subscriptions. It asks you whether you want to continue having them at the same cost or whether you want to cancel their PayPal Subscriptions and then they will set a new one up when they pay the next invoice.

 

36 minutes ago, opentype said:

Yeah, known issue without a proper solution. Feel free to add your comment here: 

No, this isn't the same thing. This customer is using 'products' not subscriptions.

[opentype]

10 minutes ago, Stuart Silvester said:

No, this isn't the same thing. This customer is using 'products' not subscriptions.

The problem I described in the linked topic is not limited to the newer subscription system, but applies to product subscriptions as well. 

[BouncingXkala]

38 minutes ago, Stuart Silvester said:

Your customer has an active PayPal Subscription, they cannot 'renew' anything because that subscription is still active and waiting for PayPal to take the funds and then let your community know that it has been processed.

As noted above about updating the prices for existing customers, there's an option specifically for customers using PayPal Subscriptions. It asks you whether you want to continue having them at the same cost or whether you want to cancel their PayPal Subscriptions and then they will set a new one up when they pay the next invoice.

 

No, this isn't the same thing. This customer is using 'products' not subscriptions.

That's fine if the customer knows this, but it's not anywhere to be seen that this is the case. Nothing to even demonstrate easily what the client needs to do. They just keep getting stuck.

 

[Stuart Silvester]

41 minutes ago, TecsenseAsh said:

That's fine if the customer knows this, but it's not anywhere to be seen that this is the case. Nothing to even demonstrate easily what the client needs to do. They just keep getting stuck.

 

The 'problem' per-se with PayPal Subscriptions is that you're in limbo until they take the payment. There isn't anything to renew, it's simply just waiting for PayPal to send instructions. Generally they're pretty good at being on time but I have seen it be weeks later than expected. PayPal is the 'odd one' out of the gateways we support in that they decide when to bill and then they need to tell your community they have done so. With other gateways such as Stripe your community tells Stripe when to bill and how much.

You may want to consider using Stripe if you're having customers billed late by PayPal. 

[BouncingXkala]

On 5/2/2022 at 5:50 PM, Stuart Silvester said:

The 'problem' per-se with PayPal Subscriptions is that you're in limbo until they take the payment. There isn't anything to renew, it's simply just waiting for PayPal to send instructions. Generally they're pretty good at being on time but I have seen it be weeks later than expected. PayPal is the 'odd one' out of the gateways we support in that they decide when to bill and then they need to tell your community they have done so. With other gateways such as Stripe your community tells Stripe when to bill and how much.

You may want to consider using Stripe if you're having customers billed late by PayPal. 

I am not sure if I follow. If the PayPal subscription is suspended/cancelled on the IPS profile, then surely the user can renew within the store means and not have to ask me to delete the previous transaction to resolve it?

Cheers!

[Marc]

12 hours ago, TecsenseAsh said:

I am not sure if I follow. If the PayPal subscription is suspended/cancelled on the IPS profile, then surely the user can renew within the store means and not have to ask me to delete the previous transaction to resolve it?

Cheers!

Are you sure that its only the paypal subscription and not the subscription itself?

[BouncingXkala]

15 hours ago, Marc Stridgen said:

Are you sure that its only the paypal subscription and not the subscription itself?

Could you elaborate for me please?

Cheers!

[Marc]

8 hours ago, TecsenseAsh said:

Could you elaborate for me please?

Cheers!

The paypal subscription is suspended, then they have suspended their method of payment, not the product (the subscription to your site). Those are 2 different things

[BouncingXkala]

16 hours ago, Marc Stridgen said:

The paypal subscription is suspended, then they have suspended their method of payment, not the product (the subscription to your site). Those are 2 different things

Ok if the payment method is suspended is it not possible to have some kind of link in place within the store instead of the user being completely clueless? Trying to find solutions to this problem is tricky! 🙂

[Randy Calvert]

Easiest solution is don’t use PayPal. It’s been more hassle than it’s worth. Switching to Stripe was the best decision I ever made. 

[opentype]

3 hours ago, Randy Calvert said:

Easiest solution is don’t use PayPal.

Or at least not with Billing Agreements. That’s what I do. I offer Stripe (with various payment methods) and PayPal, but only Stripe has the option for automatic payments enabled. PayPal is still available and used a lot, but it will only create a new invoice when a subscription period ends. 

[BouncingXkala]

Our business relies on the renewals of our existing customers on PayPal, telling them to configure a new billing method would surely discourage them from doing so. Or atleast a small portion may not.

This is for new members and returning customers, surely there has to be another way. I have not seen this issue present on other forum software, is it the way PayPal interacts with IPS?

[opentype]

It’s how PayPal Billing Agreements work. The PayPal user authorizes PayPal to automatically send a specific amount repeatedly with a certain time interval to a service provider. That works fine. But if the service provider wants to change anything about the price or the time interval, it gets problematic, as the Billing Agreement is locked in with PayPal. (And for a good reason. As a PayPal user I don’t want to suddenly see an automatic payment be twice the amount for example, as I never agreed to that.)

So, the best solutions are to either never change the price and terms of a Billing Agreement or to not use it at all. If you do want to make changes to existing Billing Agreements, then there is no other option than to cancel the Billing Agreements and let users agree to new prices and terms. 

[BouncingXkala]

22 hours ago, opentype said:

It’s how PayPal Billing Agreements work. The PayPal user authorizes PayPal to automatically send a specific amount repeatedly with a certain time interval to a service provider. That works fine. But if the service provider wants to change anything about the price or the time interval, it gets problematic, as the Billing Agreement is locked in with PayPal. (And for a good reason. As a PayPal user I don’t want to suddenly see an automatic payment be twice the amount for example, as I never agreed to that.)

So, the best solutions are to either never change the price and terms of a Billing Agreement or to not use it at all. If you do want to make changes to existing Billing Agreements, then there is no other option than to cancel the Billing Agreements and let users agree to new prices and terms. 

Totally understood that, however I am not questioning the billing agreements I am wondering how I can improve the user experience when it comes to not knowing what is going on with not being able to purchase the same subscription they purchased a month or however long ago.

As you can see in my screenshots, the user has no idea what is going on. When they click view purchase there is no details stated there. Maybe I need to add what you've said in the little notes section so atleast when they click "view purchase" they see why they don't have an option to buy and how they need to fix it?

[Marc]

Generally the user will already know they have an expired subscription, however we do have internal notes to improve in this area. In the meantime, notes may be a good thing to add